Take a Look at Student Behavior: What Does it Tell You?

Like most people, I have learned a great deal from my mentors. My first mentor at the University of South Carolina was the University’s 23rd President, Thomas F. Jones, the founder of the now internationally replicated and acclaimed University 101 program, which he passed on to me to run for the next 25 years (with respect, love and care). President Jones was fond of telling the story of how he came to have the idea to create this course.

The idea came out of the aftermath of a student riot in 1970 when the students, having been tear gassed by South Carolina National Guard troops, dispersed across the campus to find him in his office that beautiful May day. They proceeded to occupy his building and thoroughly trashed it. For the rest of his career he would describe this event graciously and commend the students for teaching him something, namely, in this case the fact that they were angry! The questions for him became: why were they angry, and what would he have to do to prevent them from being angry in the future? Those questions led us to reengineer how we assimilated new students into our university. As he would narrate his epiphany in this case he would always urge his audiences to go out and observe student behavior and decide what it tells us. This is a practice I continue to this day.

The greatest challenge of course is trying to see more clearly what you see every day, but may not mentally note what you see because you have become so used to it. An example for the majority of Americans now would be their seeming obliviousness to the plight of the unemployed and the homeless. We have stopped noticing the ubiquity of the “for sale” signs. We overlook the boarded up, empty stores. We mentally tune out media reports about bad economic news.

As hard as they may seem to believe, I find that when I am on campus I am constantly asking myself: What are they doing? What am I seeing? What is the meaning of what I am seeing? So you have to be alert; you have to look; you have to keep asking. I consider this a kind of scouting, as if I were a combination of anthropologist and detective and recon point. I am always on patrol.

I live in a small, western North Carolina mountain town, where there is a small college. This is a college town where I almost never see students off the campus. This makes me ask literally where are they? What are they doing? I know they aren’t in class all the time. The thing that I see them doing most frequently is gathering in small groups, particularly in one place, and smoking. Yes, that’s right smoking. Before I started looking at these students at this unusual campus, I never thought of smoking as a student activity. But it is. We can never know all we might want or need to know about our students. We have to keep looking and keep asking—both ourselves, and them. I have been doing this for 44 years and I am going to keep doing this for as long as I can see.

We maximized our efforts by linking FoE with the Higher Learning Commission's AQIP system for accreditation. Through this link, efforts related to the first year had instant cross-functional commitment and were viewed through a continuous improvement lens.— Ali O'Brien, Asst. Vice President for Educational Affairs - College of Lake County

Based on my experiences with the Institute, I can assert with assurance that FoE is a highly structured but very flexible process that has 'evolution' as its signature characteristic. An institution that participates in FoE exemplifies what Peter Senge calls "a learning institution."— Roberta Matthews, Former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs - Brooklyn College

This has been an incredible (and quick) endeavor and an eye-opener in many ways. What is most rewarding to me, at the moment, is to have so much information in one place and accessible to so many people. This takes us way beyond anecdotal conversations. THANK YOU…for helping us get our data uploaded, assembled, reloaded, corrected, and available to our users.— Regina Shearer, Associate Vice President for Student Success, Rivier University

The John N. Gardner Institute has provided us an opportunity to really have candid conversations, as well as connect with other like-minded schools and senior staff. Student success is extremely important to our institution. With JNGI, you really get the idea of how we are all on the right path.— Sasha Heard, Student Affairs Manager, Allied American University

Working with the Gardner Institute provided a structure to look at institutional effectiveness. This structure was more encouraging, and less threatening, than evaluative agencies and brought people together from across the campus, all committed to the same task - new student success.— Mark Lange, Former FoE Liason - Holyoke Community College

The John N. Gardner Institute is a group of people that have an extremely high level of expertise in education. They know education - they don’t just know the software or a program - they know all the touch points needed to craft a good system that that is going to work for our students.— Stuart Benkert, Director of Complete College Tracking and Assessment, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

We've been in the implementation process for a short time and have achieved great momentum. In a time of 'lean' operating, FoE is the perfect tool to help institutions achieve efficient and effective operating goals while adding value to the student experience.— Shawn A. Anderson, Dean of Student Services - Minnesota State Community and Technical College

I am proud to say that our work is still going on almost four years later, and the focus on what is most important, the student, is still a large part of our planning for new programs and curriculum redesign.— Amy Baldwin, Instructor of English - Pulaski Technical College

The FoE self study helped us to identify initiatives that were working well, pin-point gaps in our services, and set goals for continuing to improve our efforts in meeting the needs of our students.— Amanda Yale, Associate Provost for Enrollment Services - Slippery Rock University

The FoE process was transformational for MCCC. It helped us bring all stakeholders together and have a dialogue that has brought real changes to our institution. As we journey on, we are now very mindful and intentional in thinking about student success.— Dr. Steady Moono, Vice President for Student Affairs - Montgomery County Community College

Our FoE Philosophy Statement served as the basis for the development of our Quality Enhancement Plan for SACS and for the improvements we have made to new student orientation, advising, and retention.— Debbi Clear, Vice President of Instruction & Student Services - Virginia Highlands Community College